When Kemira’s Municipal & Industrial segment was established in Brazil in 1996, it was presumed that the new operation would collaborate with Sabesp, the most important water company in South America. This government-owned utility is responsible for serving public drinking water to more than 30 million people in the São Paulo state.
Since this was a long-term plan, there was also the need to ensure that this partnership would develop beyond just the direct sale of products. As a new player in the Brazilian market, Kemira did not want to run the risk of becoming one more vendor amongst the many others in a fierce price competition.
Opening doors…
Kemira’s initial strategy was to recommend the use of a new product in Sabesp’s water plants. “We offered the coagulant ferric sulfate, not used in Brazil at that time, where aluminium sulfate was predominant,” explains Wanderley Ferreira, Marketing and Sales Director for Kemira in South America.
This approach paved the way for future cooperation. In order to incorporate the new coagulant, Sabesp needed to conduct a technical approximation. In addition to information exchange, independent tests were carried out in the laboratories of Escola Politecnica at São Paulo University (USP) to evaluate the performance of ferric sulfate in water and sewage. The initiative has proven to be successful with the large scale adoption of the coagulant in several of Sabesp’s plants.
“The effort was significant not only because of the transaction itself, but because Sabesp started to see us as a partner, a company able to help them find solutions to their problems,” explains Ferreira. Besides being a major customer of coagulants and polymers in Brazil, Sabesp’s acknowledgment
helped open doors for Kemira within the Latin American sanitation market.
…for more cooperation
Similar experiences of a joint effort recurred over time. To improve the algae control in its reservoirs, Sabesp carried out a test on a Kemira’s polyelectrolyte which aids in flocculation. As Adilson Nunes Fernandes, a Sabesp chemist recalls: for the first time, a solution made the algae coagulate with the flakes during decantation.
Also notable was the fact that the solution enhanced water quality by eliminating the taste and odor caused by algae usually associated with the water in some regions of São Paulo city. Sabesp, Kemira and the University of São Paulo created a solution for this problem. Using potassium permanganate instead of chlorine in the preoxidation proved to be very effective.
The partnership between Kemira and Sabesp will continue with additional projects. One of them aims to control odor in sewer booster stations by testing dosing equipment and special products before other municipal companies in South America. Another project aims to control filamentous bacteria during the biological phase.
Text: Marcelo Furtado
Original article published in Kemira’s stakeholder magazine Waterlink 3/2009